SPARTACUS

AGAINST ROMAN EXPANSION

SPARTACUS

AGAINST ROMAN EXPANSION

Biographical Briefing of Spartacus

Spartacus was born in Thrace. Spartacus was captured by the Romans and was sent to a school for trained fighters called gladiators. Romans supported slavery. Conditions of the school were very harsh, they often fought each other till death. Soon Spartacus took 70 other fighters in harsh protest. They ran away safely from the fighting school and hide away at Mt.Vesuvius. The band of rebelling gladiators grew to about 70,000 slaves.

Spartacus led his band and defeated many regions including all of southern Italy. Spartacus and his forces went north hoping to reach the Alps for freedom and made it to Gaul but many of the followers refused to leave Italy. They then met up with the Roman army led by Marcus Crassus. They cornered Spartacus and killed him. Spartacus troops became disorganized and fearful. The Romans captured 6,000 of them, however Spartacus and his troops defeated 9 separate Roman armies.

Roman Expansion

Romans often inslaved the people living there. There were nearly 5 million slaves in Italy and kept increasing. The slaves in the city were sometimes allowed to get jobs. Since there was so many slaves this resulted in more crudity in the slavery institution. Then, before the slavery expansion slaves were treated fairly well. They got to work along side farmers and were often considered part of the family. As slaves became more popular and more used, they became cheap, and were treated badly. Overseers (slave supervisors) were very cruel and very rich. Slaves had their skin branded, lived in dungeons underground and were chained up all day an night. If they were sick, they were sold or turned out to starve. Finally slaves revolted in very serious ways. They set up their own kingdom with 20,000 slaves. It took a lot of power for the roman army to defeat them.